Bone Walker: Book III of the Anasazi Mysteries (39 page)

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Authors: Kathleen O'Neal Gear,W. Michael Gear

BOOK: Bone Walker: Book III of the Anasazi Mysteries
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Nichols put his empty coffee cup on the counter, and his eyes glinted. “So, either you’re the killer, or you’re bait for the killer.”
Dusty felt suddenly hollow, floating. He heard his mouth say, “Okay.”
“Good. One last question.”
“What?”
He could see Nichols’s square jaw grinding beneath his shaved cheeks. “You’ve been on a lot of excavations with Rhone. Does she sleepwalk?”
Dusty didn’t answer. He was remembering the time they’d made camp on a mesa top, and she’d almost walked off the cliff at midnight. “Maybe. How should I know?”
Nichols nodded as though he knew Dusty was lying. He turned away and seemed to be looking absently at the door.
Dusty lifted both of his wet hands in a gesture of surrender. “Nichols, listen, I don’t care what you think, Sylvia is not capable of murder. I
know
her.”
Nichols tucked his notebook back in his coat pocket and shifted as though not certain he should respond to that.
“I’m not accusing her of consciously doing anything wrong, Stewart. Abused children often do things they don’t remember. It’s as though their young minds were shattered by unendurable pain, and to protect themselves they had to sever the neural pathways to the memories. But the memories are still there, and sometimes, late at night, they peek out. The adult does anything she has to to shove them down and get that door locked again.” He opened the door. “I’ll see you out at the crime scene.”
Nichols left.
Dusty braced his hands on the counter and closed his eyes. In an agonized whisper, he said, “I’m starting to hate that guy.”
 
 
BROWSER LAY ON his stomach in the collapsed remains of a fourth-floor room, watching Pigeontail walking south across the flats toward War Club village. His two dogs trotted at his heels.
“Why did you let him go?” Catkin asked from where she crouched under the slanting roof. “He’ll tell everyone where we are.”
“I let him go because it doesn’t matter who he tells.”
Catkin frowned. “Why not?”
“Because by now the White Moccasins know exactly where we are. Carved Splinter will have told them.”
Catkin’s grip tightened on the hilt of her war club. They both knew the effect of torture. A man would shout out anything if his tormentor was cutting the flesh from his body and dropping it into a cooking pot before his eyes.
Catkin whispered, “Then the White Moccasins may have been watching us for some time, probably from the south rim. Pigeontail’s visit here was just the final confirmation.”
“Yes.” Browser nodded. “They will be here just after dusk. As soon as they can approach without being seen. They will want to make sure we don’t escape under the cover of darkness.”
“What about Blue Corn’s warriors?”
“I think Blue Corn will be unsure. All they saw was an old Trader and his dogs walk across the canyon to Kettle Town. Then, after a couple of hands time, he walked back.”
He ducked under the sagging roof and walked to the ladder. Climbing down, he led her through the labyrinth of passageways to the main room. There, in the crackling light of the fire, Stone Ghost and White Cone talked. Obsidian was tending the fire. She turned her large eyes on Browser and smiled at him as they entered. Several of the Mogollon lay wrapped in their blankets, sleeping.
“Nephew?” Stone Ghost asked.
Browser glanced around the chamber. “Where’s the little girl?” He was accustomed to seeing her with Stone Ghost.
“I don’t know,” Stone Ghost said, and his wrinkles rearranged into sad lines. “She disappeared right after Pigeontail left. I looked for her, but I haven’t found her yet.”
Obsidian said, “I thought it was strange that we could be cooking and she wouldn’t be hovering over the pot like a starving weasel.”
Stone Ghost gave her a murderous look.
Browser said, “If she’s not back by the time we have to move, she will have to take her chances.”
Stone Ghost bowed his white head and nodded. “I know, Nephew.”
Browser turned his attention to White Cone. “Elder? I need your warriors.”
White Cone’s black eyes tensed. “You’ve had my warriors at your disposal for days now. That is why Carved Splinter is missing.”
“Yes, Elder, I’m sorry. He was a fine warrior. But since he vanished, your people are more leery of my orders. In our present situation I must take some desperate
measures to save us. I was hoping you might acknowledge my authority.”
“A great War Chief should be able to achieve respect without another’s help. You once had a reputation as a great War Chief. Recently, people have said you lost your Power, that the gods abandoned you.”
Browser felt the sting of humiliation. “Elder, I cannot always know the ways of the gods. My concern is how to defeat two different enemies at the same time. As to the belief that I have lost my abilities and Power, well, Elder, I’m counting on just that.”
“How will you do this?”
Browser knotted his fingers around the hilt of his belted war club. “I have heard that the Society of the Bow produces warriors who can kill with the silence and swiftness of Falcon. Is it true?”
White Cone’s eyes were keen and alert. “It is.” The old man aimed a finger at the empty mat beside him. “Sit down and tell me
exactly
what you plan.”
 
 
THE COLEMAN LANTERN illuminated the interior of the battered old camp trailer with soft yellow light. Maureen slid into the booth with a steaming cup of tea, forcing Sylvia Rhone and Michall Jefferson to slide around the table. They didn’t even seem to notice. Both were engrossed in discussing how they would open the excavation tomorrow.
Dusty stood in the kitchen, making a lettuce and tomato salad. His blue eyes were a million miles away, probably walking some trail with Dale. Though he’d yet to display any real grief, she could see it in his slow, careful movements, as though if he didn’t concentrate, he wouldn’t even be able to toss a salad.
Maureen ran her hand over the scarred tabletop and
thought back to other times when she had sat with Dale in this little booth. He would always fill her memories. She could see him as he had been at the 10K3 site, and then at Pueblo Animas: his wiry gray hair matted from his fedora hat and his bushy mustache curled with his smile. He was peering at her with knowing brown eyes from the past. At this little square table, Dale had been at his imperial best. Some of the most important artifacts in the Southwest had rested upon this vinyl surface. Now it supported a plate of baked beans and tamales: the canned variety warmed in a skillet. To her amazement, a boxed chocolate cake sat to her left—compliments of Dusty’s shopping expertise and Safeway.
Sylvia shoved a lock of shoulder-length brown hair behind her ears, and her green eyes pinched as she listened to Michall line out the excavation units. “So, we’re going to start digging right on the spot where Dale was killed?”
“That’s what the FBI wants,” Michall said. She’d pinned her red hair on top of her head with bobby pins, most of which were about to fall out. Red curls drooped around her ears.
Sylvia sat back in the booth. “Okay, but I’d prefer to work up on it from the sides. You know, to get in practice before I have to start worrying about missing the ‘subtle clues’ Dusty keeps talking about.”
“You’d better not miss anything,” Dusty said as he picked up his Guinness, walked over, and set the salad bowl on the table next to the chocolate cake. “You’re the one who’s been taking all those religious studies classes. You ought to be able to recognize witchery before anybody else out there.”
Sylvia blinked like he’d just said something truly astounding. “You bet, boss, absolutely, so long as it deals with Aboriginal Australian metaphysics, I’ve got it covered. My last class delved really deep into that stuff.”
Dusty gave Sylvia a reproving look as he started filling plates and handing them around the table. “Well, just keep your eyes open. There must be similarities between Aboriginal and Puebloan witchcraft.”
Sylvia scowled. “Like what? The uses of witchetty grubs and rattlesnakes?”
Maureen smiled. She and Sylvia had become close friends during the excavations at 10K3, and had worked together at Pueblo Animas. Sylvia’s keen wit included neither piety nor good taste, but Maureen had watched her work endlessly in the hot sun, muscles rippling under smooth sun-browned skin. She’d had a really tough childhood, much tougher, Maureen suspected, than Agent Nichols knew. After all these years Sylvia still slept with a baseball bat—just in case. Everyone who’d ever worked with her knew you did not surprise Sylvia when she was asleep.
Michall Jefferson, on the other hand, was a new element in the equation. A sober-eyed redhead, she had an Irish phenotype, short in frame, but with the broad shoulders of a swimmer. She had just finished the course work for her Ph.D. and had turned in the first draft of her dissertation. She wore a hooded gray sweatshirt with UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO stenciled across the front.
They ate in silence for a few minutes; then Sylvia said, “Hey, Dusty, what do you really think about all this?”
He looked up from his plate. “What do you mean?”
“Well”—she lifted a shoulder—“I mean, I don’t know how to feel about digging this site.”
Dusty swallowed another bite of tamale and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Don’t feel, Sylvia. Don’t think. Just dig. Every year dozens of archaeologists excavate murder sites. In places like Bosnia and El Salvador, they have to dig up mass graves, a lot of them filled with recently murdered children. You’re just excavating a site, Sylvia. Do it the very best you can.”
Sylvia chewed a mouthful of salad and reached for her Coors Light can. She pressed in the sides, then released the pressure so that the aluminum popped out with a
tink.
“You know, you couldn’t do that with a real beer,” Dusty said.
“Yeah, but the only difference between Guinness and ninety-weight gear lube,” Sylvia responded, “is the price.”
“And the creamy fizz.” Dusty lifted a bottle of Guinness to the light. “This has fizz, and it’s like oatmeal, it’ll stick to your innards.”
Sylvia
tinked
her Coors can again. “I always knew you were constipated. That’s what gives you your peculiar personality.”
Dusty pointed at her with his beer bottle. “You’d better be thankful I’m not in charge of this project. I’d make you dig the trash midden.”
“Fortunately, this is Michall’s project, and she says I have to dig the kiva.”
Michall’s pale eyebrows lifted. “Yep. It’s just me, Sylvia, and the FBI.” She shook her head. “God, I can’t believe I’m actually doing this, digging the site where Dale was killed.” Her face worked, communicating her upset.
In a soft voice, Dusty said, “Well, just do it like he’d have wanted: perfectly. Imagine him looking over your shoulder the whole time.”
Michall’s expression tightened. “Thanks, Dusty. It’s creepy enough as it is.”
“It’s not the dead that you have to worry about.” Maureen held her teacup in both hands. The pleasant aroma of mint was a welcome change. “It’s the living.”
“Damn right,” Sylvia said. “I watch TV. Murderers always return to the scene of the crime. Who knows what sort of monster might come walking up to us out there?”
“I won’t even notice,” Michall said. “Not when I’m
excavating the place where Dale was murdered.”
“I’m glad you’re the one digging the site,” Dusty told Michall. “Dale would have appreciated the fact that you were in charge. He had a lot of respect for you.”
She smiled at that. “God knows where I would have ended up but for Dale. I’d probably be married, with two-point-three kids, a mortgage, a house in the suburbs, and a harried life juggling kids, household, and husband.”
“Well,” Dusty chimed in, “you do have the SUV.”
Michall drove a Dodge Durango, but somehow the blue four-wheel drive Maureen had seen that afternoon with its big meaty rubber-lugged tires, spattered mud, and heavy-duty winch evaded the “soccer-mom” model.
“Yeah,” Sylvia said. “I can just see you as a housewife watching
Days of Our Lives
at noon every day.”
Michall chuckled. “I came out here four years ago to escape my boyfriend. You know, one last fling with life before I married him. I had my B.A. in hand, and wow, what a rush! I could use my degree and go dig in the Southwest before I moved into a nice house in Chelsea.”
“Where?” Dusty gave her a puzzled look.
“Boston. My degree was from Boston College. How was I supposed to know that Dale was waiting for me out here, like a big brooding bird of prey.” Michall’s voice dropped to mimic Dale’s. “Ms. Jefferson, you have a rare sense for archaeology. You are one of the truly gifted. However, if it is your desire to return to Boston and function as a bipedal set of ovaries, that, too, is a noble profession. The species does need to be propagated.”
Sylvia smiled appreciatively. “God, Dale had such a way with words.”
Michall shrugged. “How do you respond to that? I mean, of all the people on earth there was something
about Dale that made you want to do your best. I would have rather crawled across broken glass than have disappointed him.”
“As I recall,” Dusty said, “he worked things out behind your back.”
Michall had a thoughtful look. “Yeah, it was coming up on fall and Dale asked if I wanted to start my M.A. in January. He said Colorado was going to have an opening. He’d even lined up a couple of scholarships for me. There it was, a cut-and-dried decision.”
Sylvia cocked her head, asking, “Do you ever regret not marrying that nice young man and having all those rug rats?”
Tears sprang to Michall’s eyes. “The only thing I regret is that Dale won’t be in Boulder next spring to see me hooded. We had a bet. If I finished my Ph.D. in two years, he bought dinner.”
A heavy silence descended. The only sound came from the hissing lantern.
Sylvia tossed off the last of her beer. “Yeah, well, I’m headed for the dormitory room that Rupert assigned us behind the park headquarters. It’s going to be a long day tomorrow, and a nasty one if there’s frost in the ground. That means swinging a pick.” She stood up and slid out of the booth.
“I could always wander over to make sure you get up on time,” Dusty offered.
“No, thanks,” Sylvia replied. “My eardrums haven’t recovered from your last shotgun blast.”
“Yeah, thank God there are no guns allowed on national monuments,” Michall added.

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